> And the same people seem to forget that the ultimatum in 2021 was during the war of aggression launched in 2014, not before a conflict that started later. 20

> And the same people seem to forget that the ultimatum in 2021 was during the war of aggression launched in 2014, not before a conflict that started later. 2013, the Maidan Revolution had very clear motivations to oust the Russian links and when Yanukovych was being ousted bodies were being piled up in Kyiv; the fighting in the Donbas region took place with Putin's little green men afterward, but the first shots and casualties were felt in Kyiv. I highly recommend Vice's Russian Roulette series, how it never won a Pultzer for it is beyond me; I was dealing with the Maidan Revolution from the Bitcoin side and then eventually the Come Back Alive campaign and they covered so much of the minutia of that conflict it was really commendable--they were the first to go into Crimea and do investigative journalism into the financial dealing in the annexation and documented the migration of Crimean people to Western Ukraine, And I agree with what you said, Russian never intended to do anything but exert its geopolitical muscles and had no intention of peace agreements despite the rhetoric-- the peace deals in the onset where being conducted while Russia was bombing residential buildings in Kharkiv and committing war crimes in Bucha, Irpin, Sumi! But I need to take you back even further to 1994 and the Budapest Memorandum where Russia vowed to retain Ukraine's borders and agreed not to invade as the signees (US, UK) all signed to protect it and subsequently looked the other way during the invasion of the Donbas/Luhansk while simultaneously dealing with hyper inflation and capital controls. And Germany and the rest of the EU valued cheap oil/gas more than Ukrainian lives. I really hate to say this as I'm anti-nuclear proliferation, but History has shown time and again that even a pariah State like N. Korea gets to do what it does because it is a semi-nuclear armed nation. Ukraine should have never trusted the West or Russia and kept maybe even 1/8th of the arsenal just in case there border's integrity were challenged. Putin's Russia cannot be trusted, and the sad truth is that there is no one who really could replace him: Medvedev is his puppet and is even more insane with his rhetoric and Lavrov is a senile old kook who lives in a fantasy World that no one wants anything to do with. Alexi was a proponent of the 2014 invasion, too. And I'm not even going to touch on Prigozhin. Nadia from Pussy riot could be a unifying voice/figurehead given her outspoken activism and alliances with the Westand sympathies with Ukraine, but she knows f' all about Geopolitics or how to deal with a crumbling economy marred with plutocrats/oligarchs in every sector with some of the worst standards of living and crippling fertility rates (even before the invasion). It's just sad... and to be honest the fact that Belarus and Russians are fighting on the Ukrainian side makes me hopeful that their is a contingent willing to sacrifice to oust the Putin regime, but what comes next is not clear and that is what worries me most.